Saving Baelfire
by Ellynne
Summary: The weaver knew how to catch a dying soul in her nets. So, she spun a web for Baelfire.
1. Making a Web

I don't own Once Upon at Time.

**Note: **The main character in this, Alix, is from some stories I started writing as a kid and has never been published anywhere (although she gets some passing mentions in my story, **Ill Met by Moonlight**).

I was upset at recent events in the show, so I decided to send her over to fix them.

X

The irony is that, if the woman known as Emma Swan had seen the ethereal creature walking the edges of the Enchanted Forest, unlike the people who had grown up in that world, she would have found the words at once to describe her: something from a fairy tale.

The people of that world wouldn't have thought it. Magic might be real in their world, but it was as solid and unsurprising as the dirt beneath their feet or a cold rain in autumn. Fairies, sirens, they were warm creatures of flesh and blood you could touch with your two hands (whether or not you'd be wise to do so).

For Emma alone, the world fairy tale could still mean something too fragile and pretty to be real. This being—very like a woman but far too lovely to be one—was an illusion, like a confection spun of glass and light. She had all the beauty of a soap bubble waiting to vanish at a touch or breath of frost on a window about to be dismissed by a flame.

Her braided hair was sunlight yellow. Her skin was the color of snow at sunrise when the morning light may touch it with just a hint of pink rose. Only her eyes seemed real. Their burning, blue light was too intense to be anything else. She wore pale, faded lavender and ghostly shades of white.

Alix set up her nets.

Different nets, as any fisherman could tell you, for different fish. Different weights to hold the nets to different depths to catch the fish that swam there. The rules applied to her as well.

Most of her webs, spun delicately as lace, were all silver and starlight, innocent strands for an innocent soul or the echoes of one. She had to be grateful for the forces that had (once again) shattered this realm. Like getting the yolk of an egg, some things were so much easier once the shell was cracked.

It was the other land that was troubling her.

Still, she set her lace nets to catch her prey where it ran low to the ground through woods and fields. She set them, pretty as snowflakes, high above to catch dreams that had traveled among the stars (and through the stars, and through the darkness to the shadows that lay beyond). In a ruined castle and along deserted roads, she hunted. She made other webs, spinning threads the dark colors of grief and others the unchangeable hues of courage. She found fear and anger, pain, betrayal, love, and a thousand other echoes.

Last of all, she placed her web around the white ice that hid the darkness, a place that could never be found by light of day, only by night.

A tricky web, she thought. So easy to gather what she did not want. No pretty lace here, no hint of anything that did not speak of purpose; nothing that, in its very lines and form, did not speak of guarded readiness (so obvious, Alix knew, but the darkness she walked around was subtle and ever shifting, so her webs stood strong and honest). She placed the nets with utmost care and walked around them, waiting and listening as the winds began to blow.

The webs caught them, as they always did. The winds, touching those threads, took visible form, ghosts and memories that struggled against the threads that bound them. She watched as they twisted and writhed, seeking escape. Then, they burst free, leaving the tattered bits that clung to her webs behind them.

Alix began to circle round, gathering them up. She held each piece up to the moonlight, examining, listening to each voice, running them through her hands as ardently as a blind woman feeling secrets, looking for the taints that might so easily poison it and destroy all her work.

Then, she put each piece carefully away.

There was another world she needed to search.

The many souls of the cities she searched were like sounds drowning out the music she needed to hear. Still, Alix set up nets. She called winds, she searched for bits and pieces in the places where her instincts said she might find them.

In New York, she found a small apartment where he had lived. She sat crosslegged on the floor of his room as the sound came down from the old record player on the shelf above. She closed her eyes, head tilted back and mouth slightly open, as if the sound were rain she could catch on her tongue.

Last of all, she stood in the tangled forests of Neverland. Here, she made nets of green threads that grew leaves and thorns. She spun shadows, and the starlight that graced her threads was cold, an alien watcher instead of the promise of wonder.

The harvest in the world without magic had been thin. In Neverland, where time was meaningless and echoes of the past blended into each new day, she found many scraps of memory, each blending into the other threads.

Alix looked them over. It was enough, she thought. Not all that the one who summoned her had hoped for, but as much as she had hoped for and a little bit more.

When all the pieces were gathered, she set up her loom and began to weave.

Spinner, weaver, there were threads of fate tying to two together. It bound her to this work.

The warp was made of golden thread, spun fine as gossamer. This spinning was none of her handiwork

Again and again, each piece was examined. Now, she did not look just for taints, she looked for the length of each piece, for its strength and weakness, for how it fit—or didn't—against all the others, joining fragments as carefully as if she were piecing together broken glass, jagged glass edged with poison to destroy everything with one careless nick.

Now and then, there was not enough. Pieces ran short or didn't fit—or were gone entirely, leaving nothing but gaps. When that happened, she picked up more of the golden thread and worked it in to cover the gaps.

Till, at last, her weaving was done.

Alix gathered it up, examining it closely. Not perfect, she thought. So much less than he'd hoped for but still more than she'd expected. The work was flawed, as would be its making.

But, it was enough.

Or so she hoped.

The time was drawing near. She didn't see futures, but centuries of work had left her sensitive to the stirrings of fate around her. The time was soon.

She found her way again to the shattered realm, the Enchanted Forest that was, and found the ragged threads that still bound it to the small world that had been born out of it. She followed the path to Storybrooke.

She had arrived in time. The woman they called the Savior, their fair swan, held the hands of a man she had loved (Alix, with an eye for weaving, saw all the threads that had woven those two lives together, satisfied she had got it right).

She held out the cloth she had woven to the winds as they gathered. She saw the spinner bow over his dying son and watched as the man's soul broke free of his flesh.

_Here,_ she thought. _Come here. See what I have made you?_

The soul trembled, uncertain.

_Here. It is not your time. The dead do not call you. Not yet. Come here._

The soul drifted towards her. It sensed what she held, moving towards it.

Alix held her breath (not that she needed to breathe, but the habit was strong in her and she had a predator's need to taste the air for danger and prey). The soul drifted closer. It seemed to look at what she held. She felt curiosity more than recognition. It seemed to look at what she held, with a sense that it should know what it was.

Tentatively, it reached out—and was sucked into the weaving Alix had made for it.

Hastily, Alix put it down. She had two last treasures, a drop of blood and a single hair, precious because they were the only ones she had. Without them, what she was doing would fail. Even with them, it might fail.

She placed the hair over the place where the heart would be and let the blood drop fall over it. The garnet drop slid itself over the hair, like a larger snake devouring a smaller one. Then, both were sucked inside her weaving. Alix watched as her handiwork began to shift and change, becoming solid, colors blossoming across it as it took form.

A young boy, perhaps fifteen years old, lay on the ground in front of her. He seemed to be asleep. His face twisted in a nightmare and he woke, gasping for breath.

"Papa, no! _Papa!_" he yelled. He looked around. Alix was quite sure he didn't notice her. All he saw—or didn't see—was the one person he was looking for. "Papa?" he said. "Papa, where are you?"

Alix cleared her throat. "Baelfire?" she asked.

The boy looked at her, confused. "Who are you? Where's my father? Did he—" the boy's face crumpled. "Did he leave me?"

"Oh, let's not go down that road again," Alix said. "Hello, Baelfire, I'm Alecto, but you can call me Alix. I'm a friend of your father's. He asked me to help you.

"This is rather a long story, but I put together as much of your past as I could. I'm afraid I missed a lot in two worlds where you've lived, although I did save some things. For example, I'm betting your dying for a pizza about now. . . ."


	2. The Kindness of Fire

"Papa, no! _Papa!_" Bae yelled. He looked around. He was alone in a forest, but it wasn't the one near the village. It was also daytime, even if the sky was overcast and gray, not night. "Papa?" he asked again, still hoping for an answer. "Papa, where are you?"

He heard someone clear her throat. He turned around and saw a woman. He wondered at first if she was a ghost, she looked so insubstantial. "Baelfire?" she asked.

She knew his name, which no one in another world could know. Could they? "Who are you? Where's my father? Did he—" Grief flooded him. But, there was something wrong. Bae remembered falling through the portal, he remembered his father clinging to the dagger and letting him go—

—_He remembered a pain searing through his hand, a stone in the earth sliding away and form made of nothing but darkness rising up from it as Baelfire felt his life draining away—_

—_He was frozen in place while the piper who had said he would let him go if he wanted to return to his father reached for his heart to crush it, only to have his father appear and stop him—_

—_Baelfire felt the life draining out of him. His father held him tight against his chest. Somehow, Bae knew Papa was keeping him alive. He saw him let go of the dagger, felt something warm flow around him—_

—_Papa was holding the piper as close to him as he'd held Baelfire. The piper changed, becoming a man, as Papa drove a knife through both their hearts and vanished. . . ._

"Did he leave me?" Bae asked, uncertain at the chaos in his mind.

The woman looked much less ethereal as she rolled her eyes. She seemed to be changing, he thought, becoming more substantial and less like a dream. "Oh, let's not go down that road again," she said. "Hello, Baelfire, I'm Alecto, but you can call me Alix. I'm a friend of your father's. He asked me to help you."

Alecto. Bae stared at her, remembering where he'd heard that name. A _friend_ of his father's?

"This is rather a long story," the woman went on. "But, I put together as much of your past as I could. I'm afraid I missed a lot in two worlds where you've lived, although I did save some things. For example, I'm betting you're dying for a pizza about now. . . ."

_Pizza. The best pizza in the world was in the city of New York, where Bae had taken Henry. . . ._

_Henry. Who was Henry?_

He saw fragments of something that felt like a confused dream. The piper's country, Neverland. There was a boy he'd been hunting for—_this_ boy. Papa was there. Papa was helping Bae rescue the boy. No, Papa was trying to kill the boy. Only Bae had some magic that stopped him. . . .

A dream. That had to be a dream. How many times had Bae wished he could stop Papa?

Except that he'd been wrong. Papa told him he wanted to save the boy because of Bae, but the only way he could stop the piper was by dying with him.

Bae remembered being angry, yelling at Papa. "The piper is my friend!"

Papa's eyes, full of fear—real fear, though he'd told Bae he wasn't afraid of anything. "His true nature . . . is darker and more repulsive than you should ever be exposed to!"

And he remembered standing frozen while the Piper looked him over mockingly, him and a woman named Belle (Papa loved this woman, had loved her for a long time, even though Bae didn't see how that could be possible).

"Hmm, you both look so adorable. Hard to tell which one to kill first." The Piper's face changed as he looked at Bae. More impossibilities ran through Bae's head as he understood why the Piper wanted to kill him. Because Bae was the son of the man the Piper hated, because Bae was the father of the boy he'd failed to kill (fragments, nonsense, how could he be a father?).

"No, it isn't," the Piper said.

"You.

"You first."

And he reached for Bae's heart.

Then, Papa appeared, stopping him.

_You're my happy ending._

"Baelfire? Baelfire! Stop doing this! You need to focus, do you hear me? Focus on the sound of my voice. Focus on where you are, on what's happening now." Something was thrust up against his face. "Do you smell that? Tell me, what are those smells? Name them for me."

"P—pine," Bae said. "Dirt. Leaves."

He was in the forest. The woman—Alecto? Alix?—was holding a fistful of dirt and old leaves held around a wad of crushed pine needles. He stared at her. She had changed again. She looked stronger and more solid, as if she were carved from stone. Her grip on his shoulder was rock hard.

"I'm sorry," she said. "We need to be careful. I did my best, but you're not whole."

"I—I don't understand. What happened? Papa—"

"You've heard of Seers? People who see the future? I listen to the past. I spin webs to catch the echoes of it that are carried on the winds. I captured and wove together as much of your past as I could, all the memories I could find. But, this world, it's noisy and you were always trying to be quiet and hidden. The other, time was meaningless there. Hard to catch the past where the past doesn't exist.

"I knit them together as well as I could, but what I made wasn't whole. You still need to make it part of you. But slowly. Too many pieces were coming at you at once. When that happens, try to breathe. Try to think of the present, to hold yourself in the moment. Can you do that?"

Bae shook his head, still not understanding. "Why? You wove my past together? What about my real memories? What happened to them?"

"Ah, funny you should ask. Put your hands together, make a bowl of them."

Confused, Bae obeyed. She dropped the pine needles and dirt into them. "Hold those up to your face. Concentrate on the smell. Listen to the sounds of the forest. Breathe in, taste the dampness of the air and the wet chill. Feel the earth beneath your feet. Feel my hand on your shoulder. Hear my voice. Exist in this moment.

"Now, listen. Don't try to remember what I tell you. Think of my words as a story. Your father died saving you."

_Shadows. The dagger. Papa vanishing. The smell of blood—_

Bae practically buried his nose in the pine needles, crushing them further with his hands to release more of their scent. The air, cold and damp; the ground beneath him, soft with moist earth and mouldering leaves. Alix's fingers digging into his shoulder like painful rocks.

"You're all right?"

Bae nodded. She went on.

"You were tricked. You thought there was a way to bring him back. And there was. But the price was a life. Your life. Keep breathing. Do you smell that in the air? The wind is coming in off the sea. That's good. The wind that comes down from the north is a killer, but this is from the east, Land of All Suns Rising we call that where I come from. A good omen, don't you think?"

"Where—where are you from?"

"Originally? The Land of All Suns Rising. Since then, Beneath the Sunset. I can't say either one did much for me. I had a lovely fortress in the middle of Nowhere for ages. The Stone, we called it. But, my brother went and broke it—we were having an argument. All right, are you ready for more? Can I go on?"

"I think so."

"Just keep breathing pine needles. Think of them tickling up your face and going up your nose. It is impossible to get trapped in the past when you're worried about pine needles going up your nose." She took a deep breath. "All right, then. Your papa came back. You were dying. Your lives were linked by the spell, the magic you'd made to get him. And your papa, well, he's your papa. He took you inside him. He joined your lives."

"The witch—she took the dagger—Papa—"

"Hush, hush. Don't think on it. One problem at a time. That witch is seven kinds of fool, and I intend to teach a lesson to each one of them, time allowing.

"You needed to be freed. But, if he freed you, you died. This was not a good thing. So, he needed to free you and let you live. Or not let you stay dead, which is not quite the same thing.

"Now, magic weaves with symbols. Magic weaves with the meanings hidden in things, not the things themselves. Your father held you inside him for the better part of a year—nine months would have been better. It always is for something like this. But, twelve months, the passing of a year, that has power of its own, too, and I could work with it.

"Think on it. How did your first life begin? You grew within your mother when you didn't have life enough of your own. She shared hers with you, shared her breath and the food she ate, shared each pulse of her heart if only because you had to hear it—by the way, I don't know about you, but I always found it so annoying the way I could never get my own pulse to match up with my mother's before I was born. The rhythms should match, even if it's two or three of my beats for each of her one. But, they never line up as neatly as that. It was the most irritating thing I remember about those days, since I didn't know people were waiting to kill me. Just goes to show, you never appreciate the good times when you have them.

"But, that's the magic of creating life, of giving enough of your own life so it can nurture two till the second is ready to be cut free. If you're not doing it the time honored way, it gets a bit tricky. I'm not saying your father couldn't have worked around that if he'd been in a better state. But, I wouldn't say he was at his best. And it really wasn't a good time or place for him to let you loose. You had the same problem I did as a baby, people waiting with big knives. Or person and big dagger.

"But, he got a message to me in the winds. I made my weaving. And I found two things he had kept safe: a hair from your head and a drop of his blood. Once the hair was joined to my weaving, that weaving became flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. Or close enough. As for blood, blood is life. There are a bunch of vampires who will write testimonials on that point. I only needed to give you a drop of your father's life to spark your own. Do you see?"

The crushed needles dug into Bae's palms as he tightened his hands around them for reasons that had nothing to do with releasing more of their scent. "You made me a new body." _Think of it as a story. _"Because my old body died."

"Not a point I meant to dwell on, but yes. You thought it would help your father and got someone else to pull you free of him. I believe he expected you to do something like it when he managed to get word to me. So, I've been busying myself running around and finding what I thought would draw your soul like your own flesh. Believe me, it's not as easy as it sounds. The real problem is you only have the memories I was able to catch for you. I think I have nearly everything that happened in the world you were born in, but just bits and patches of the rest."

"Bits and patches," Bae repeated. He imagined himself as a strange quilt. One with holes in it. "What did you do for the empty spots?"

"Ah," she gave him a sideways look, like the ones Papa sometimes gave him since the curse, when Bae saw the clues that Papa had done something terrible and asked him if it was true. Papa would look at him like that before laughing and saying it was or laughing and telling Bae not to worry about it.

_I love you, Bae._

_You're my happy ending._

"I've made a deal or three with your father in my time," Alix said. "I've seen the gold he spins. I hunted through your land for threads of it, threads he'd spun when thinking of you. Or trying not to think of you. It's much the same thing. I wove those in to cover the gaps."

Bae reached a hand to his chest, barely noticing as the pine needles fell, as if he could feel what she had done. "You used his _gold?_ That's dark magic! You—you put that _inside _of me?"

"I used your father's love," Alix said severely. "I used what he made when he thought on you or what he made when he could no longer bear the pain of thinking one you—remembering how he'd lost you. And I know how to listen to the heart that's spun into threads. Yes, he spun threads with darker thoughts and darker griefs. I didn't use those." She eyed him critically. "That gold gave his blood something to lock onto, along with the rest. Just be patient. Think of yourself as a tree that's had a few bits and pieces grafted onto you. Give yourself time for them to become part of you while you heal. You'll be whole in time."

"Why should I trust you? You're like him, aren't you?"

"Hmm, good question. I'll answer with another question: What makes you think so?"

"When I first saw you, you looked harmless, like a—a spirit. Or something. You looked kind. And good. Now—" But, he didn't know how to describe the change. Except she wasn't good. He was certain of that.

"Oh," Alix waved aside this objection. "That. When I worked on this weaving, I had to think like light and air. Air because there were some very delicate winds I had to catch. Light, because I needed to be careful of even a shred of darkness from your father's magic.

"But, now, you need an anchor. You need things strong and growing, something that gives life. I'm thinking like stone and earth, that's all.

"But, you're right, I'm not good. Not exactly. I try to be. Usually. But, succeeding? That's another story. Howevert, I gave you my name. And you know it, don't you?"

"Alecto," he breathed. "The hatred that never dies."

"Well, yes, that is one way of translating it. Alecto in legend is one of the Erinyes; the Furies; the dog-faced, snake-haired demons of vengeance. We are also called the Euminedes or kindly ones. Some will tell you this is because it's best to speak of us kindly less we become offended, as if I haven't heard it all already. But, others will say it is because we do the duty of kin and kind for those who have none. We avenge wrongs on behalf of those who are powerless to seek vengeance.

"My brother and I—"

"The Furies are supposed to be women. Sort of. And aren't there three of you?"

"It's amazing what stories get wrong. My brother and I were born to and end and to a purpose. We save what can be saved. Failing that, we avenge what has gone." She sighed. "That's why I like your father. Around most people, I'm either an overprotective mama bear—mama dragon, my brother would tell you, he's always been the saner of us two. Almost always—or I'm trying not to go psychotic killer—Oh, and don't worry, I'm strictly mama bear around you. Anyhow, your papa didn't need me to protect him. And someone who would go to the lengths he would to save his son has to work pretty hard to trigger my, er, particular type of instability. And he never went that far. Around him I was just . . . I suppose you'd call it normal. No mad impulses or drives to keep in check. Just human.

"_And_," she added, giving him another severe look. "We're _just_ friends. If I'm the mama bear and he's the papa bear, we are talking a strictly separate beds arrangement, just like the story says. Which, I suppose, makes you the baby bear. In which case, don't ask me about finding golden haired girls in your room. Besides, that ship has sailed, and I'm a bad influence on children for even bringing it up. Sorry."

"Uh. . . ." Bae had seen Papa like this, too, spinning words around people till they didn't know which way was up. He tried to think over what she'd said (except the part about girls; he was trying hard _not_ to think about that). "Papa. He let go of the dagger to hold onto me. Someone—I remember a witch. She took it. She's controlling Papa."

"Zelena. Yes."

"Are you—are you going to do anything about it?"

She gave him that sideways glance. "Your papa asked me to do two things, no more: to save you and keep you safe."

"I don't need you to keep me safe!"

"Beg to differ, but I'd wind up throwing pine needles up your nose and probably stuffing them down your throat if we rake up that much of the past. However, you didn't listen. I said your father asked two things of me. A good witch always aims to do things in threes. And a good friend doesn't wait to be asked.

"Besides, you've seen earth and you've seen air. I'd really be doing you a disservice if I didn't introduce you to fire."


End file.
